


All My Sons

by Phoenixflames12



Category: Lord John Series - Diana Gabaldon, Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Book 3: Voyager, Book 7: An Echo in the Bone, Gen, The Scottish Prisoner, fathers and sons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-06
Updated: 2017-04-06
Packaged: 2018-10-15 11:28:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10555550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phoenixflames12/pseuds/Phoenixflames12
Summary: A re-write of the pivotal scene from An Echo in the Bone where William finds out that Jamie is his father from William's perspective.





	

**Author's Note:**

> All dialogue that sounds remotely Diana Gabaldon-esque belongs strictly to the book.

All My Sons

 

‘Who are you?’

 

The question comes out in a hoarse croak, his eyes glued on the man pulling himself up to his full height before him, weary eyes blazing.

 

He looks familiar, the height at least ignites some form of memory in his blank brain, but the way his clothes hang off him, the palable stink of vomit and alcohol makes William’s stomach clench.

 

Slanted cat eyes look back at him, sizing him up, commiting him, it seems to memory.

 

Absorbing every vestige of him like a condemned man of the sky before he was led to the gallows for the final time.

 

The same, slanted cat eyes that he remembers vaguely rising out of the gloom back in the Lake District, the day that he had wandered away from Mother Isobel and Grandmama up into the hills and had been lost in the fog.

 

_Remembers the icy shadows of the tumbled stones, the fog cold in his chest, making each breath ache. The fog whispered around him, the rise and fall of distant voices as cacophonus as church bells._

_Was he going to die up here?_

_The thought is sudden, spiked, making him curl further in on himself. Was he going to die in the cold, surrounded by the faces and hands of the dead, the monsters that old Nanny Elspeth with her flint coloured eyes and creaking, gummy smile that bore a mouth full of wooden teeth delighted in telling him about with her creak of a voice and the cackling glow of the nursery fire?_

_Perhaps if he stayed like this, quiet and still, the monsters wouldn’t find him._

_Gooseflesh ripples up the thin linen of his shirt as he presses his arms closer around his knees. The corset digs into his sides, painful and tight and another breath shudders through him, aching against his ribs. He had lost his jacket on the climb and the thin linen of his shirt does nothing to keep out the chill._

The same, slanted cat eyes look back at him as if looking at a ghost. The self-same eyes that gazed back at him every morning as he stood by the washbasin and splashed his face for shaving.

 

The same bold, solid bones rising through his cheeks, the same…

 

_No._

 

_No._

_It was not true._

It could not be true, he could not allow it to be true and yet even as his brain tries to be rational, even as he tries to articulate his thoughts into coherent speech, he knows that it is the truth.

 

Without warning, he finds himself searching desperately for Claire, for his father. For the man for last fourteen years, he had believed to be his father. Her eyes are as wide as his, the shock written in every inch of her face.

 

_She knew then._

_She had to, there was no other way._

‘James Fraser’, the man watching him said at last; voice hoarse, eyes flicking over to Claire, who nodded silently; her grip on his shoulder suddenly painful.

 

‘Ye kent me once as Alex MacKenzie. At Helwater.’

 

_Mac._

_Of course. It was all at once so right and yet so, so wrong._

 

Mac who had lived up in the stable loft and had shown him round the stables, his strange Scots burr a lullaby amongst the snort and stamp of the horses. Mac, whose body was comforting warmth as he was lifted from the depths of the straw strewn stable floor to the heights of Milliefleur’s back. Strong arms holding him, soft murmurs in a language that Lord John had, years later, told him was the _Gaidhilg._ Spoken in the Scottish Highlands and Islands and a barbarous tongue if ever there was one. William is not so sure, if the horses had warmed to Mac speaking it, then surely it was not so bad.

 

Mac who had taken him up to his room once, with the shadows of candlelight flickering on bare beams, a crude, wooden statue of the Virgin Mary, a water jug on the sill.

 

Mac who had pressed damp fingers to his forehead and carefully traced the shape of a cross, soft, horse scented warmth brushing against his skin.

 

_‘I baptize thee William James.’_

_Why?_ He wants to ask, wants to beg, shout, scream, eyes shifting in horror to Lord John, the man who only a few moments ago he was sure was his Father.

 

He shakes his head violently, like a dog with water in its’ ears, desperately trying to rid himself of the memory.

 

‘You are a stinking Papist,’ Fraser’s voice is quietly precise, the broad, exhausted face suddenly shadowed by a ghost of regret that passes before he can truly register it.

 

‘It was the only name I had a right to give ye,’ the words are spoken so softly that William has to strain to hear them; rage that he does not understand bubbling in his throat.

 

_Had a right?_

Fraser had had no right, he had been a servant, a groom in his uncle’s employ and yet without warning William remembers catching glimpses of the servants casting wary glances in Frasers’ direction when he passed them, the stable boys scuttling out of his way.

 

He nearly doesn’t catch the man’s next words, only sees the blades of blue watching him, pooling with regret.  

 

‘ _I’m sorry.’_

The rage in his throat is almost unbearable now. It scorches him, making it impossible to breathe. It burns his eyes and without thinking what he’s doing, his left hand slaps his hip, looking for his sword.

 

If nothing else, he could challenge Fraser, his father, he doesn’t know, doesn’t want to know, to a duel.

 

Rage and fear makes him clumsy as he finds nothing, the cold weight of the blade is not there, but is replaced instead by another weight, around his neck. A cool, warn weight that he has not thought of in years.

 

The cool, cat eyes are watching him with a desperate sadness; the unspoken apologies that he does not want to hear thick and choking in the air.

 

 _I know,_ the eyes seem to say. _I know… Mo chuisle, I am so sorry! So verra, verra sorry!_

William’s fingers grip the rosary hard beneath his shirt, the stiff, starched fabric choking him as he struggles to get it free.

 

The fabric comes loose easily; good cambric ripping in the silence and he pulls the rosary over his head; the beechwood beads still warm from his skin as he hurls it blindly at Fraser.

 

‘God damn you, sir’, he says finally, unable to stop his voice from trembling, unwilling to stop the condescending snap from hitting the last syllable. ‘God damn you to Hell!’

 

Without waiting for a reply, he turns blindly, spinning on his heel to face his father, whose face is a mask of silent shock.

 

‘And you! You _knew,_ didn’t you? God damn you, too!’

 

Each word seems to hit Lord John with all the force of grapeshot and he cannot bear to see the desperate hand reaching out for him, nor hear the pleading tone of his name from the man’s lips.

 

‘William-‘  Lord John begging him, pleading with him, Fraser’s gaze saying a thousand things that his tongue could not.

 

It didn’t matter.

 

Nothing mattered except the fact that Fraser, Mac, Jamie, whoever he was, was not his father: could never, ever be his father.

 

It is only the sound of voices in the hall below and boots on the stair that stop him doing what he knows he must.

 

* * *

 

**_Fin_ **

**Author's Note:**

> Please feel free to read and review! Comments, suggestions, constructive criticisms etc are like chocolate to my brain!
> 
> Much love and enjoy x
> 
> Song suggestions: Highland Cathedral sung by Caledon 
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9H2nvaw9zE


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